The BBC: are claims of political bias justified? Part 2.

[Not a Boffin]

I wonder if anyone has done an analysis of the anti vaxxers in the NHS. How many are actually nursing/medical staff and how many are admin? If admin then this could be a good way to curb the ever increasing NHS supplementary staff.

Never forget the following :

1. The NHS is a monster that consumes something like £150Bn pa, or £400M per day and employs 1.5 million people in some shape or form, which is broadly, 5% of the working population. The popular myth is that there is a parasitic layer of managers and admin staff that exist purely to feather their own nests and that it would be better if they were all sacked and replaced by some version of Hattie Jacques. For context, the NHS spends in 10 days, the annual turnover of Babcock and in one month, the annual turnover of Rolls Royce. That sort of cost control and monitoring does not come easily or cheap. and while it may seem to be best put in the hands of medics, ask yourself whether you've met a doctor who would say "we can't afford that" in relation to staff numbers, ward sizes, new kit etc.

2. Huge amounts of the bureaucracy are imposed on the NHS by the legal industry, via the "rights" industry through pressure on HMG. As soon as HMG legislates to monitor race, sexual identity, unicorn identity, socio-economic status, pay relative to gender, age etc, they impose a statutory duty on that organisation to measure, monitor and report on it. You can't pay lip-service to it, because an army of ambulance-chasers modelled on the Wide-Mouthed Frog, the Kimono Fox-Killer (aka Good Law Project) and/or Captain Hindsight will come chasing after you, waving class action suits, all funded by the tax-payer (natch). That's before you get to stuff that the NHS should be measuring and monitoring, like clinical outcomes, waiting times, experiential base and age profile of workforce etc etc.

I'm not a huge fan of the way the NHS does business, but it has absolutely no control over this. We - as a society, or more precisely through a failure to robustly argue whether a lobby group cause is sensible or proportionate - do this to ourselves. Exactly the same applies across all civil service and local government organisations - and indeed to large corporates.

 

[Truxx]

As I have noted on here before, the Roman elites thought the emperor Claudius thoroughly queer. Not only was he disabled, and had a speech impediment, but...

...he only shagged women.

Morning Civpop.

How was the filthy Northern beer????

 

[BuggerAll]

I wonder if anyone has done an analysis of the anti vaxxers in the NHS. How many are actually nursing/medical staff and how many are admin? If admin then this could be a good way to curb the ever increasing NHS supplementary staff.

Yes they are only talking about patient facing staff. Admin wallahs are not in scope.

I am lead to believe that there is very little sympathy for these anti-vaxxers and many people don’t want to work with them or be in the same teams as them.

No doubt the BBC will continue to try and dig up people who disagree with Boris’ anti NHS staff agenda but in the interest of balance they should talk to the overwhelming majority.

 

[Truxx]

One of the truisms of bureaucracy is that Admin staff are like herpes - with you for all eternity.

I got into a spot of bother in my last job in uniform. I had 800 civvie instructors who were, at least as far as terms of service were concerned, civil servants.

I got reported to the thought police for , having failed to sack one of the instructors for pestering a young female trainee with the porn on his phone, opining that it was easier to get rid of AIDS.

Not my finest hour at the Civ/Mil interface....

 

[Auld-Yin]

Yes they are only talking about patient facing staff. Admin wallahs are not in scope.

I am lead to believe that there is very little sympathy for these anti-vaxxers and many people don’t want to work with them or be in the same teams as them.

No doubt the BBC will continue to try and dig up people who disagree with Boris’ anti NHS staff agenda but in the interest of balance they should talk to the overwhelming majority.

What you are saying then, is the NHS total of anti vaxxers could be a lot higher if one included admin staff?

 

[Ian525]

Yes they are only talking about patient facing staff. Admin wallahs are not in scope.

I am lead to believe that there is very little sympathy for these anti-vaxxers and many people don’t want to work with them or be in the same teams as them.

No doubt the BBC will continue to try and dig up people who disagree with Boris’ anti NHS staff agenda but in the interest of balance they should talk to the overwhelming majority.

I know it is against the rules etc etc however would it be reasonable and interesting to know the ethnic background of the anti-vaxers?
(After all, we have to have an ethnic tick box on everything else. I am intrigued...)

 

[Truxx]

Yes they are only talking about patient facing staff. Admin wallahs are not in scope.

I am lead to believe that there is very little sympathy for these anti-vaxxers and many people don’t want to work with them or be in the same teams as them.

No doubt the BBC will continue to try and dig up people who disagree with Boris’ anti NHS staff agenda but in the interest of balance they should talk to the overwhelming majority.

That's not how it works though. If 1000 people think one thing, and Dave from Hartlepool thinks the opposite, then Dave from Hartlepool gets to gob off on telly.

The BBC would say ahhh but we are being balanced. But they are not, because they are giving both opinions equal profile even though Dave may spent the rest of his day shifting park benches and generally shouting at geordie pigeons.

 

[Truxx]

I know it is against the rules etc etc however would it be reasonable and interesting to know the ethnic background of the anti-vaxers?
(After all, we have to have an ethnic tick box on everything else. I am intrigued...)

You,Sir are going to burn in the fires of Hell.

 

[OllieReeder]

Morning Civpop.

How was the filthy Northern beer????

Excellent.

 

[Truxx]

Excellent.

Levelling up you see.

You send us money, we send you beer.

Everyone wins.

I could be a SPAD

 

[OllieReeder]

I got into a spot of bother in my last job in uniform. I had 800 civvie instructors who were, at least as far as terms of service were concerned, civil servants.

I got reported to the thought police for , having failed to sack one of the instructors for pestering a young female trainee with the porn on his phone, opining that it was easier to get rid of AIDS.

Not my finest hour at the Civ/Mil interface....

At least you defended the press office totties from the lustful advances of the Bootie who was more interested in them than changing the wheel on his Jackal or whatever...

 

[OllieReeder]

I could be a SPAD

Too old, too much common sense, too much integrity, not enough arrogance.

Despite a lifetime as an Army officer.

 

[Truxx]

At least you defended the press office totties from the lustful advances of the Bootie who was more interested in them than changing the wheel on his Jackal or whatever...

Tell you who I was in comms with the other day - our erstwhile ex Charles' Press Sec and bane of our Normandy adventure.

 

[OllieReeder]

Tell you who I was in comms with the other day - our erstwhile ex Charles' Press Sec and bane of our Normandy adventure.

Did you reprise the history of the Blue Ensign or were you actually sober? I still recall cutting out the maximum security Royal Rota passes with a pair of nail scissors for him...

 

[Themanwho]

Never forget the following :

1. The NHS is a monster that consumes something like £150Bn pa, or £400M per day and employs 1.5 million people in some shape or form, which is broadly, 5% of the working population. The popular myth is that there is a parasitic layer of managers and admin staff that exist purely to feather their own nests and that it would be better if they were all sacked and replaced by some version of Hattie Jacques. For context, the NHS spends in 10 days, the annual turnover of Babcock and in one month, the annual turnover of Rolls Royce. That sort of cost control and monitoring does not come easily or cheap. and while it may seem to be best put in the hands of medics, ask yourself whether you've met a doctor who would say "we can't afford that" in relation to staff numbers, ward sizes, new kit etc.

2. Huge amounts of the bureaucracy are imposed on the NHS by the legal industry, via the "rights" industry through pressure on HMG. As soon as HMG legislates to monitor race, sexual identity, unicorn identity, socio-economic status, pay relative to gender, age etc, they impose a statutory duty on that organisation to measure, monitor and report on it. You can't pay lip-service to it, because an army of ambulance-chasers modelled on the Wide-Mouthed Frog, the Kimono Fox-Killer (aka Good Law Project) and/or Captain Hindsight will come chasing after you, waving class action suits, all funded by the tax-payer (natch). That's before you get to stuff that the NHS should be measuring and monitoring, like clinical outcomes, waiting times, experiential base and age profile of workforce etc etc.

I'm not a huge fan of the way the NHS does business, but it has absolutely no control over this. We - as a society, or more precisely through a failure to robustly argue whether a lobby group cause is sensible or proportionate - do this to ourselves. Exactly the same applies across all civil service and local government organisations - and indeed to large corporates.

Spot on.

For my twopennorth, the NHS with all its flaws is still the least worst option available to the UK. That's not to say there aren't massive flaws and waste, which should be tackled.

 

[Cold_Collation]

Yes they are only talking about patient facing staff. Admin wallahs are not in scope.

I am lead to believe that there is very little sympathy for these anti-vaxxers and many people don’t want to work with them or be in the same teams as them.

No doubt the BBC will continue to try and dig up people who disagree with Boris’ anti NHS staff agenda but in the interest of balance they should talk to the overwhelming majority.

You hit a nail very precisely on the head here.

'Inform, educate and entertain'.

In that instance, it is doing neither the first nor the last and arguably doing a little of the middle (albeit it in a click-bait fashion).

Part of the role of the BBC is as a public-service organisation. That includes informing the public as to what is right and what needs to be done.

Digging up (often very ill-informed) anti-vaxxers is none of that. It is agitating against the government of the day during a period of national crisis, based largely on the prejudices of those within the organisation and their antipathy to the specific party in power.

That is way, WAY off remit.

I'm not for the government being able to dictate what the BBC broadcasts (and some within have clearly forgotten the threats from the last Labour government to do as they were told or see funding mechanisms be reviewed*) but I do feel that there is space for the national, publicly funded broadcaster to be told to stick to its responsibilities.





*A delicious irony given the wailing and flailing we saw last week.

 

[Themanwho]

Rod Liddle's review of "The BBC: A People's History" a new book celebrating the Beeb's centenary in the Speccy:

The BBC is trapped in its own smug bubble | The Spectator

Its employees are all like-minded, and invariably deny any left-liberal bias — as does David Hendry, which devalues his otherwise well-researched history

www.spectator.co.uk

"And so to the present, with the BBC facing its most serious crisis since its inception 100 years ago — one occasioned by the increasingly incontestable left-liberal drift of its drama, comedy, documentaries and news and current affairs programmes, and a changing market in which a straight tax on everyone who wants to be connected to the outside world seems a little de trop. Hendy will have none of it: there was never any bias in the past, and there is no bias now. It is a standpoint so purblind as to devalue his entire undertaking. Yet, as I mentioned, it is a failing shared by almost all who work at the BBC. They do not think they have a bias because the corporation’s vast bubble agrees within itself about more or less everything. In a moving, and I think sincere, postscript Hendy acknowledges the lost opportunities, (non-political) flaws and top-heavy bureaucracy — while reminding us of Joni Mitchell’s line that ‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’.

"Well, perhaps. But the BBC has latterly been the architect of its own demise: the right has merely helped it on its way. And there are many — including those, like myself, who are not Conservatives — who would concur with Norman Tebbit’s description of the ‘insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naive, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of third-rate minds of that third-rate decade, the Sixties’. Oh yea, and yea again."

If we can get a copy for review @Grownup_Rafbrat , I freely admit I'm probably not the person to review it!

 

[javaguzzisti]

Rod Liddle's review of "The BBC: A People's History" a new book celebrating the Beeb's centenary in the Speccy:

The BBC is trapped in its own smug bubble | The Spectator

Its employees are all like-minded, and invariably deny any left-liberal bias — as does David Hendry, which devalues his otherwise well-researched history

www.spectator.co.uk

"And so to the present, with the BBC facing its most serious crisis since its inception 100 years ago — one occasioned by the increasingly incontestable left-liberal drift of its drama, comedy, documentaries and news and current affairs programmes, and a changing market in which a straight tax on everyone who wants to be connected to the outside world seems a little de trop. Hendy will have none of it: there was never any bias in the past, and there is no bias now. It is a standpoint so purblind as to devalue his entire undertaking. Yet, as I mentioned, it is a failing shared by almost all who work at the BBC. They do not think they have a bias because the corporation’s vast bubble agrees within itself about more or less everything. In a moving, and I think sincere, postscript Hendy acknowledges the lost opportunities, (non-political) flaws and top-heavy bureaucracy — while reminding us of Joni Mitchell’s line that ‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’.

"Well, perhaps. But the BBC has latterly been the architect of its own demise: the right has merely helped it on its way. And there are many — including those, like myself, who are not Conservatives — who would concur with Norman Tebbit’s description of the ‘insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naive, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of third-rate minds of that third-rate decade, the Sixties’. Oh yea, and yea again."

If we can get a copy for review @Grownup_Rafbrat , I freely admit I'm probably not the person to review it!

To put it bluntly the bbc is not only nailing its own coffin shut it is supplying the nails and hammer.

 

[Themanwho]

To put it bluntly the bbc is not only nailing its own coffin shut it is supplying the nails and hammer.

... Or to use another metaphor, clambering up the cross and demanding that the nails be hammered in....

 

[javaguzzisti]

... Or to use another metaphor, clambering up the cross and demanding that the nails be hammered in....

Actually given their attitude that fits much better.